How the BrainTrust Founder Helped 200+ Black Beauty Brands Rake in $142 Million

Most notable in her efforts is founding Los Angeles-based marketing consultancy BrainTrust Agency in 2015. The firm -- which was created to help develop diverse founders, predominantly Black women running beauty and wellness startups -- has since evolved into three entities: the original BrainTrust consulting firm, a membership-based network called the BrainTrust Founders Studio, and an investment arm known as the BrainTrust Fund. But that's not all that went into building Bracken-Ferguson's beauty empire. 

Since its founding in 2021, the BrainTrust Founders Studio has amassed more than 200 member-entrepreneurs, who accounted for $142 million worth of beauty and wellness products sold in America last year, according to its in-house 2024 Economic Advancement Report. 

BrainTrust Founders Studio's growth can perhaps be tied back to how difficult it is for Black founders to succeed in any business, even one as big as the beauty industry, which is estimated to be worth more than $642 billion this year, according to Oberlo. Less than half a percent (0.48) of those businesses secured funding from VCs in 2023, amounting to roughly $660 million invested into Black businesses--a three-year low, TechCrunch reported.

Despite the industry odds, the BrainTrust Founders Studio helped 25 of its members secure a combined total of nearly $115 million capital funds and angel investments in 2023, or 17 percent of that industry average. Approximately $10 million came from the BrainTrust Fund, a limited partnership established in 2022 specifically to drive early-stage venture investments in BrainTrust Studio members. 

In the hair care space, straight hair products have dominated the market despite the fact that more than 60 percent of Americans are estimated to have wavy, curly, or coily hair, according to a report from the hair company Naturally Curly. "That's one of the reasons we're seeing such explosive growth in the quality of products aimed at the [beauty] space," Stone says of the appetite for more inclusive products.

Curbing that hunger are brands like an AI-powered hair care company MyAvana, which makes product and service recommendations after digitally analyzing a photo of customers' hair and recently partnered with Ulta beauty to reach more consumers. Candace Mitchell Harris, founder of the Atlanta-based brand, met Bracken-Ferguson in 2023 at CurlFest, a natural hair and beauty event, and joined the Founders Studio quickly thereafter. Reflecting on over a year of membership, Mitchell Harris says mentorship from both Bracken-Ferguson and other Black entrepreneurs has been the biggest gain since joining the network. 

She had been looking for mentorship because growing MyAvana and expanding into retail stores had posed a challenge--one that didn't have a straight answer, Mitchell Harris adds. "Oftentimes, you want to be able to have a safe space to ask those questions. Because being a founder, there's a level of intimidation that we have to conquer daily as we're figuring things out of business," Mitchell Harris says. "[BrainTrust] gives us the platform to ask questions, so we can get the answers and the insight that we need."

Raising venture capital was another hurdle, Mitchell Harris says: For a time, it felt like fundraising was less about her business and more about which executives she could track down and meet with--at the mercy of their time and willingness to mentor.

When she found BrainTrust Founders Studio, though, Mitchell Harris felt like everything aligned. She credits the insight she gained from the Founders Studio community for helping her raise MyAvana's latest $1.5 million, which came from the BrainTrust Fund and Ulta's digital innovation fund Prisma Ventures, topping off nearly $5 million raised from earlier fundraising rounds. MyAvana expects to do $12 million in business this year, says Mitchell Harris, and is currently valued at $50 million.

But according to Bracken-Ferguson, BrainTrust's impact is about more than the financial benefits that business owners can gain from membership. Her companies are out to challenge systemic barriers that can make it hard for Black business owners to be authentically themselves.

"I've had Black founders who have said, 'I was too scared to even show that I was a Black founder because I knew that people wouldn't buy my product thinking that it was just for Black skin,'" Bracken-Ferguson says. Her mission for BrainTrust is to break down those misconceptions and educate consumers, as much as it is to be a resource and a community for Black business owners. 

Currently on tour for her book, The Beauty of Success, Bracken-Ferguson says she feels like her career has come full circle both as an entrepreneur and as an operator-investor in others. "I think as entrepreneurs, we have these great ideas; we're visionaries. But then there's this notion of our internal integrity set and what we believe," she says.

Moving forward, Bracken-Ferguson says she will continue to be anchored to her values, her mission, and her community: "Everything that I do is centered on having a brain trust of people that I can tap into, and that my founders can tap into, because we just can't do it alone."